Dead Rising 2 Prequel Sells A Ton

There were some who scoffed at Dead Rising: Case Zero, amused at what they considered to be a paid demo. After hundreds of thousands of sales over the past week, though, who's laughing now?

Capcom's Dead Rising 2 prequel, which in the US cost an approachable $US5, was deemed by plenty to be worth the price of admission, as it's racked up over 300,000 sales (328,290, to be exact) since its release last week.

In the wake of those kind of numbers, expect a lot of companies to follow suit, particularly for games like Dead Rising 2 that many people may have been on the fence about. Or anything from Activision or EA.

Comments

Steven Bogos Guest

Sep 8, 2010, 4:45pm

Good to see. I bought it, and I'm not really getting the 'paid demo' feeling. It's a self-contained little story set in a setting unique to the main game. For $5, it's a decent teaser - being able to carry your stats across to Dead Rising 2 is just icing on the cake

I bought it and I loved it. I played it through about 6 times, got all 200 gamerscore and had a blast. i am def getting the game now although I was pretty certain about getting it anyway.

But here is the catch, I was buying, at a reasonable price, a exclusive DLC that contained story and level that were not within the game. I also received an ability to level up to level 5 before I even turn on the game.

I did not pay for a demo, I paid for DLC. Granted if that DLC came out after the release, it would not have sold any... but i think that it was worthwhile.

If everyone starts releasing glorified demo's though, the risk is that they don't offer anything different from the original game, or try to charge too much for it, or they simply get less people checking out the demo as a result.. this could work against them.

I welcome this idea under certain circumstances, and as a consumer, I am able to decide not to purchase these DLC's anyway. If this hurts the game sales, then tough. The is the risk the dev takes.

I enjoyed the DLC and was well worth 5 bucks. bring on the full relaese.

Agreed. If they start releasing demos you pay for? No dice. If they release something along the lines you have here? Sidestories etc that tease you for the real game that have real substance to them? Sure go ahead!

I got the 200 gamerscore for this as well, the achievements, like in the original dead rising, were just the right am mount of fun and challenging. Finding the most efficient way to kill the most amount of zombies for the 'kill 1000 zombies' achievement was particularly fun.

When I was doig the story, the best i got was 600 zombies. So i started again just going for the 1000. It aws still hard to do in the time limit, especially because i kept running out of weapons. Not that there isn't enough, just that 1000 is a pooload...

I actually got the 1000th kill throwing nails at a zombie... Im not talking spiked bat or anything, just a pissy box of nails, throwing a handful at a time.

Looking back, that was the funniest part of this game, having to improvise when you are surrounded and have run out of everything!

"...expect a lot of companies to follow suit, particularly for games like Dead Rising 2 that many people may have been on the fence about"

If I'm on the fence about buying a game, making me pay to try it isn't going to convince me. I'd rather have a free demo taken from the actual game to try. Something like this is fine in addition to a free demo or as paid DLC. But doing this INSTEAD of a free demo would make me less likely to try it, and therefore less likely to buy the full game.

To me, a demo is 10-30 minutes of gameplay. This is an open-world, multiple-ending hyper-violent zombie-fest and it only cost 400. Most companies would release something of this length as a stand-alone (non-franchise) arcade title for 1,200 - Capcom could've done it because it was part of an established series, but it went for 400 instead. What's not to like?